Page 9 of The Space Traveller's Lover
For a brief moment, he lost concentration; his grip slipped from the steering, and the boat swerved briskly to one side, making Erin lose her balance.
“What was that?” she yelled as she firmly held onto her seat.
Sam managed to get the boat under control as he tried to find an excuse. “No worries. I thought I saw something in the water,” he said in an apologetic tone.
Erin clasped her hands on the sidebars as the boat bounced over the rippling waters, her eyes now fixed on the approaching cliffs and the roosting birds flying overhead.
She looked up, admiring the Sun’s tenuous rays through the reddened clouds when suddenly she found herself passing under a high arch of piled-up rocks.
“You’ve gone through the arch!” she screamed, not taking her eyes off the tight rocky passage as the boat swerved into the open waters once again.
Sam was smiling proudly. This route was particularly tight.
There were several such arches along the cliff walls, flanking the entries of the coastal caves. As the waves continually bashed and eroded the craggy surface, it was quite dangerous to approach them, never mind passing under them.
“I’ve been practising.” Sam cheered while purposely holding on to the steering wheel.
She gazed at him in reproach, but soon her eyes widened in anticipation as she realised they were nearing an even narrower archway.
“No, not this one.” She screamed again at the sight of the implausible passage.
But there was nothing she could do to stop Sam whisking the boat through, with only millimetres to spare at each side. Erin was stunned by Sam’s skilful manoeuvres.
He weaved his way through two more arches along the cliffs, in and out again, with such ease, Erin started to feel confident at last.
“I told you I’ve been practising,” he reassured her.
They both burst into laughter, their hearts excitedly pounding as if they had been on a rollercoaster ride.
Sam sped off into the open waters and turned the boat around to face the cliffs yet again, but this time, he switched off the engine.
They were standing right in front of the largest cave entrance, watching the waves crashing ever more frequently on the jagged crevice.
“Diablo’s cave!” she exclaimed.
“Aha!” He nodded as he started planning his entry strategy.
“You’re not trying to go in there, are you?” Erin objected, but she realised that she was stating the obvious.
“You told me you always wanted to know what it was like inside—”
“But you know it’s risky—”
“We’re just going up to the second lake. Then we turn around,” Sam assured her with an even more determined tone.
“We know it’s a very long and deep cave—more than one kilometre deep. And then there are the passages to the waterfall.” Erin tried to discourage him, but she could tell that Sam had already made his mind up.
“Only to the second lake. And we’ll be out before you know it. I promise,” Sam insisted.
“But it’ll be dark in a few minutes. We may even see that bright sphere again.” She tried to dissuade him, but Sam started the engines even before she finished talking.
Sam steered the boat towards the entrance, expertly keeping it away from the rough edges as he pushed through the choppy waves and rammed into the cave.
Erin held her breath when they came close to the sharp rocks, while Sam focused on keeping the boat dead straight through the craggy entrance. She kept her eyes partly closed as they went under the engulfing cave’s mouth. As she looked back at the sea current rushing in and merging into the interior lake, she knew they had made it.
Sam stopped the engines and turned on the powerful spotlights, their white glow illuminating the spacious cavity. The rumbling sound from the crashing waves echoed all around the concave walls while a serene feeling invaded them.
“This is beautiful,” Sam exclaimed, barely hiding his pride after his faultless rush through the hazardous entry.
